The Modern Echo Of The Debate Between He Xiu And Zheng Xuan

The debate between He Xiu and Zheng Xuan had a great influence on the history of Confucian classics.At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty,He Xiu,based on the Gongyang School,wrote Gong Yang Mo Shou,Gu Liang Fei Ji,Zuo Shi Gao Hang,and criticized the Zuo Zhuan and Gu Liang Zhuan.Especially in the aspect of etiquette,he accused Zuo Zhuan of not explaining well.Zheng Xuan used He Xiu’s thought to attack He’s principle.He wrote Fa Gong Yang Mo Shou,Qi Gu Liang Fei Ji,and Zhen Zuo Shi Gao Hang,responding to He Xiu’s three books one by one.The characteristics of the argument on the classical works are obvious.Compared with He Xiu,Zheng Xuan did not base himself on a certain theory or book.Instead,he learned about the Five Classics,promoting the atmosphere of “General Studies” for exegesis since the Eastern Han Dynasty.Zheng Xuan became the forerunner of combining the three biographies of Spring and Autumn Annals which adopted by Dan Zhu and Zhao Kuang in the Tang Dynasty.In the confrontation,He and Zheng,in order to maintain the authority of Confucian Classics,both chose to interpret it with prophecies and catered to the study of Chen-wei that the government respected.However,with the disappearance of the books of He Xiu and Zheng Xuan,it is difficult to present the content of the debate between He and Zheng,and its influence has gradually weakened.Fortunately,thanks to the Confucian scholars in the Qing Dynasty who liked to compile lost books,the books of He Xiu and Zheng Xuan were also edited and published,and people were able to understand part of them.It was Liu Fenglu who really awakened the vitality of He Xiu and Zheng Xuan’s books from the pile of old papers.He reiterated the value of the debate between He and Zheng to deal with the problem that Zuo Zhuan was more popular than Gongyang Biography for thousands of years,so as to revive Gongyang Biography.Specifically,Liu Fenglu not only advocated the study of He Xiu’s regulations,but also emphasized the “Three Categories and Nine Points” of Gongyang Biography.He also inherited He Xiu’s argument against Gu Liang and Zuo Zhuan to stick to the argumentation logic of Gongyang Biography.Liu Fenglu wrote Gu Liang Fei Ji Shen He to criticize Gu Liang,Zhen Gao Hang Ping to distinguish Zuo Zhuan and Fa Mo Shou Ping to defend Gongyang Biography.Liu Fenglu took advantage of the debate between He and Zheng to restart the dispute between present and ancient classics,in order to regain the discourse power of present study of Confucian classics.This is the first echo of the debate between He and Zheng in Han Dynasty in Qing Dynasty,and it has a great impact.Liu Fenglu’s identification of Zuo Zhuan was particularly eye-catching in the academic circles.Scholars such as Wei Yuan,Kang Youwei,and Cui Shi had followed this line of thought to identify the falsification of ancient classics,so that the debate between He and Zheng was no longer the focus of the Changzhou School.Wang Shurong,who was deeply influenced by Changzhou School,based on his admiration for He Xiu,completed Xu Gong Yang Mo Shou,Xu Gu Liang Fei Ji,and Xu Zuo Shi Gao Hang.He demonstrated that Gu Liang and Zuo Zhuan were ancient classics faked by Liu Xin and others.Different from Liu Fenglu’s attempt to elevate Gongyang Biography to the first place in the biography of Spring and Autumn Annals,Wang Shurong went one step further.He wanted to position Gongyang Biography as the only biography of Spring and Autumn Annals,completely excluded Gu Liang and Zuo Zhuan from the biography of Spring and Autumn Annals,and jointly promoted the development of identifying the falsification of ancient classics with the ancient historical school of discrimination.The influence of the debate between He and Zheng on the academics of the Republic of China can be seen.Whether in the Han Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty,the struggle between Gongyang Biography and Zuo Zhuan was usually the most intense,but the internal struggle within modern literature was easily overlooked.Gongyang Biography and Gu Liang also had disputes in the Qing Dynasty,especially in response to the debate between He and Zheng.Scholars of Gu Liang in the Qing Dynasty launched a counterattack before those of Zuo Zhuan.They regarded Zheng Xuan’s theory that“Gu Liang is close to Confucius’ thought” and “Gu Liang is good at classics” as a standard and refuted He Xiu and Liu Fenglu’s statement that “Gu Liang is defective”.Liu Xing ‘en was one of the representatives.By analyzing the similarities between Gongyang Biography,Zuo Zhuan and Gu Liang,he demonstrated that Gu Liang was not defective.At the same time,he lashed the saying of “Belittling the Zhou Dynasty and Taking Lu as the King” in Gongyang Biography,which showed that Gongyang Biography was not a study that could be “restricted to” and criticized Liu Fenglu for blindly following He Xiu.Later scholars of Gu Liang were also very dissatisfied with He Xiu and Liu Fenglu,and if they wanted to correct the name of Gu Liang,they had to join the debate on the three biographies of Spring and Autumn Annals,thus causing the debate between He and Zheng reverberates again.With Liu Fenglu’s responded to the debate between He and Zheng,the resurgence of the dispute between the study of modern and ancient classics accompanied.Kang Youwei’s criticism of Zuo Zhuan and the study of classical Chinese classics pushed the dispute between modern and classical Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty to the peak.Zhang Taiyan,an ancient writer,had to join in the confrontation between modern and ancient classics.To defend the study of ancient classics,Zhang Taiyan refuted Liu Fenglu’s Zhen Gao Hang Ping and wrote Bo Zhen Gao Hang Ping,emphasizing Zuo Zhuan’s position of exegesis from three aspects:rites,routines and events.Combined with Chun Qiu Zuo Zhuan Du,it was found that Zhang Taiyan gradually established his own belief in classical Chinese classics in the process of confrontation with modern Chinese classics.As an early work of him,Bo Zhen Gao Hang Ping had the drawback of refuting for the sake of refuting,failed to achieve the effect of “use one’s thought to attack his own principle”,and was finally abandoned by Zhang Taiyan in his later years from his own academic system.Pi Xirui and Liao Ping fully responded to the debate between He and Zheng,but what they saw was their solution to the dispute between modern and ancient classics.In Pi Xirui’s book Fa Mo Shou Zhen Gao Hang Shi Fei Ji Shu Zheng,he clarified Zheng Xuan’s combination of three biographies of Spring and Autumn Annals and returned to the form of Xu Shen’s modern and ancient divisions.When dealing with the debate between He and Zheng,Pi Xirui’s approach was quite clever.He deliberately ignored the arguments between He and Zheng to highlight the advantage of Gongyang Biography,that is,when Gu Liang,Zuo Zhuan and Zheng’s theory were consistent with Gongyang Biography,Pi Xirui affirmed their value.In his book,Pi Xirui advocated that “figure out the boundary of three biographies of Spring and Autumn Annals,establish the correspondence between He and Zheng,quell the controversy of learning,and promote the different opinions of the previous scholars”.For him,the three biographies of Spring and Autumn Annals that can be interlinked,reconciled,and extended are exactly in line with the meaning of Gongyang Biography.Coincidentally,Liao Ping also praised Xu Shen’s Five Classics with Different Meanings and advocated that “the ancient and the ancient are the same,and the present and the present are the same”.In the process of Liao Ping’s changes in the study of classics,he had always judged the modern and ancient nature of three biographies of Spring and Autumn Annals based on whether it is compatible with the Royal System.Even if he pulled Zuo Zhuan from the Ancient School to the Modern School,it did not affect his attitude towards the criticism of the the three biographies.Liao Ping maintained that the three biographies of Spring and Autumn Annals have the same origin,so he tried his best to reconcile He and Zheng Zhi’s theories,seeking common ground while reserving differences,and the bridge among them was Gu Liang which was most in line with Royal System.He regarded the study of the classics as a whole and used Royal System to control the Six Classics.It was no longer limited by the study of modern and ancient classics.Although Pi Xirui’s argument is fair,his position on modern classics is unquestionable.Therefore,Pi Xirui was not able to truly jump out of the framework of the binary opposition between modern and ancient classics like Liao Ping.Since Liu Fenglu responded to the debate between He and Zheng,under the academic environment of the dispute between modern and ancient classics in the Qing Dynasty,scholars with different academic positions unanimously launched new Confucian classics propositions around the dispute between He and Zheng,which expanded the debate between He and Zheng in modern times and inspired greater academic repercussions.Sadly,the Confucian scholars in the Qing Dynasty,following the mode of “arguing” about Confucian classics in the Han Dynasty,continued to discuss the debate between He and Zheng.But it intensified the suspicion of Confucian classics,which not only promoted the historicization of Confucian classics,but also pushed Confucian classics into the dilemma of falling apart.Taking the modern echo of the debate between He and Zheng as a clue to investigate will not only help to reveal the thoughts of scholars on the three biographies of Spring and Autumn Annals,but also provide a new path for the dispute between modern and ancient classics in Qing Dynasty and even the study of Confucian classics in Qing Dynasty.